A previously unavailable story, A Guest In The House Of Ruin (a much-extended version of this fragment), has been published by Aether & Ichor.

Fitful dreams flickered through the mists of sleep, jumbled up across space and time. Memories floated to the surface of my unconsciousness until they coalesced into one image; Annabella. How she’d laughed with glee at a puppet show in Yellow Park, the jerking dances and squeaking voices making her clap her hands in delight. Her tears, hot and inconsolable, when the news was announced of De Pontellino’s death; days spent locked in her room, playing the master’s cascading etudes on her piano instead of eating; listening over and over to the little music box I had bought her. I saw the day she came to me in my rooms as I was reading my mail. The words she said, having undoubtedly been made to say them by her wretch of a brother. Her face as she turned to leave; her blue eyes, red-rimmed, refusing to meet mine. Her hair tumbling from its amber combs as she fell.

No, she said. Please don’t.

Immense personal thanks to the team at Aether & Ichor for their support and editorial rigour. This wouldn’t exist, certainly not in as complete a form, without them.

Statement 1:There is a place that is no-place with a time that is no-time. A potentiality of Place, it could be said, but still a place nonetheless.

Statement 2:Things exist in this place. They do not “live”, and they do not “die”, as there is no time for these things to occur in. They merely exist. They are potentialities of Thing, it could be said, but still things nonetheless.

Statement 3:Sometimes, however, there is a ripple in the place that is no-place and the potentiality can become actuality.

Conjecture:If there are ripples, are there waves? If there are waves, what then?